U.s., Japanese Carmakers Team Up For Mutual Gains

June 2, 1985|By KNT News Service

FLAT ROCK, MICH. — Mazda Motor Corp.'s $450 million Flat Rock assembly plant, scheduled to open in late 1987, will push total production of Japanese cars in the United States to nearly a million units a year by 1988.

Mazda, Japan's fourth-largest automaker and an affiliate of Ford Motor Co., joins Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. in building small cars in this country. A fifth Japanese concern, Mitsubishi Motors Corp., said last month that it will build cars with U.S. partner Chrysler Corp. at a new Midwest plant in 1989.

While U.S. auto production by the five Japanese companies will swell to about 1.1 million units a year by 1990, a significant portion of that output -- up to 500,000 cars -- could be earmarked for U.S. affiliates of the Japanese. Domestic automakers concurrently plan to import another half a million small cars a year from their Japanese partners.

Mazda's decision to build cars for itself and Ford in Flat Rock is one more indication of how committed Japanese automakers are to protecting their lucrative market in the United States.

The eight Japanese companies that sell cars in the United States have been restrained since 1981 by import quotas. The Japanese government, fearful of new protectionist measures from the United States, decided in March to extend quotas for a fifth year. The restraints on imports and the threat of new restrictions such as local-content requirements have encouraged the major manufacturers to invest in U.S. production of their higher-volume car lines.

At Wednesday's ground breaking in Flat Rock, Mazda president Kenichi Yamamoto said his company ''is as concerned with how to contribute to the American economy through employment and increased economic activity on your soil as it is with producing and selling high-quality products.''

The new plant, patterned after Mazda's Hofu City manufacturing complex in Japan, will be one of the most modern and efficient assembly plants in the world, according to Mazda. Set to open in the fall of 1987, it is scheduled to produce 240,000 sporty, front-wheel-drive compacts a year, half of which will be sold to Ford.

Japanese car sales in the United States this year are expected to total more than 2 million, or one-fifth of all new-car sales.